


Break The Skin

by everybodywantssome



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Angst, M/M, Season 3 Episode 7: "One Minute"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27681997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everybodywantssome/pseuds/everybodywantssome
Summary: After Hank beats Jesse, Saul visits Jesse in the hospital, and struggles to comfort him and keep Walt at arm's length.
Relationships: Jimmy McGill | Saul Goodman/Jesse Pinkman
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21





	Break The Skin

Jesse looks like shit. The skin on his face is more purple than pink, swollen, like it could burst at any moment. Only one eye in commission, and his upper lip gashed. Hank may look like anybody’s uncle with a beer gut, but he’s got a mean hook, befitting a cop (and specifically a cop who was made to think his wife was on her deathbed. Saul’s fault—sort of.) Saul can’t tell what’s scarier, Hank finding out what Jesse and Walt have actually been up to, or the punishment Jesse received for Hank’s suspicions. Well, definitely the former, but still. The slightly gaunt but boyish face Saul has become so accustomed to has been morphed and discolored and broken, like the Jesse peering at him through one eye is reflected in a funhouse mirror. 

If Saul had to itemize his own assets and skills, comforting is not top of the list. Or really on the list at all. He is still the kid’s attorney, bound by duty to let him know his capacity to knock around Hank Schraeder’s ass in court. He holds his (very expensive!) Blackberry to Jesse, flashing light in his eye, adding to the intolerable fluorescent light coming from the ceiling. 

“Yo, Adrian, Rocky called, he wants his face back,” he jokes, trying to lighten the mood while snapping the photograph, cringing on the inside seeing it stare back at him. Jesse doesn’t wince at the light, just rolls his eyes at Saul. “C’mon, I gotta cheer you up. See that? That’s your get-out-of-jail-free card.” He points to the picture. “You understand ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’? I mean, just blink once if you’re following,” he says with a weak chuckle. 

Jesse does nothing. It clearly hurts to do anything. Afraid of the dead silence, afraid to occupy space with Jesse without some sort of commentary or response, Saul continues to yap nervously about how Jesse needs not to fear the DEA because Hank  _ fucked up.  _ Bad. 

“You’re home free! … Good, right?” he asks with a nervous, fake smile. “Right.” 

Walt opens the door, gently closing it behind him. Instead of nervous rambling, he instead expresses his visceral shock at Jesse’s face. Well, is it visceral shock? Saul doesn’t trust a goddamn word or slightly facial expression that comes out of Walter White. 

Of course, Walt’s presence provokes a response in Jesse. Rage. 

“So … what, what happens now?” Walt asks, turning to Saul for the answer. Saul rises, to walk over to him, being cut off by Jesse’s words. Pinkman wants no sympathy from anybody, just pure cold revenge over Hank Schrader for terrorizing him. Walt’s perception of him as a moldable pawn sways nexts to the man before him. Stuck between the two of them, between the two poles of their emotions, Saul feels like he’s caught in one of those laser matrices in the movies where one wrong move starts sounding deafening alarms. Always quick to joke, quick to diffuse, quick to do whatever he can to make Jesse happy, he intervenes, telling him that all of his needed revenge is already right there in their laps. The DEA won’t touch him anymore. Hank will be reprimanded. He already has the power. Don’t make any sudden movements. Don’t expose the whole operation. 

Jesse wants none of it. Saul puts his hand to his face, nervously shaking his head. He just wants to warp the kid in a damn blanket, shake him till he stops thinking that some suicide mission cooking even more meth in a different RV in the desert is a good idea. It’s a bad idea, just like falling in something-adjacent-to-love with your meth-cooking 20-something-year-old client. But Jesse continues to threaten Walt, which is equal parts terrifying and exhilarating. Why he ever put up with Walt in the first place is astonishing to Saul. From what he’s heard about Walt going back to high school, he’s always been a condescending ass. But, a little bit of approval and money and he seems willing to put up with nearly endless amounts of abuse. Until now. 

Damage control mode is engaged. As much as Saul would love to see Walt’s smug ass in jail sometimes, it would be a catastrophe for himself  _ and _ Jesse. Nope, he isn’t going to rat on him. He can’t. And even if he doesn’t, Saul is willing to try any way he can plant the seed for Walt to release him from his web of paternalism and constant physical violence. Tells him that continuing to associate with Jesse is a death wish, because he’s a dangerous rat, just like he said he was. 

“Believe me, there’s no honor among thieves,” Saul insists, watching the cogs in Walt’s brain turn trying to make sense of what Saul is telling him. “Well, except for us, of course,” he panickedly throws in, not wanting to poke an egotistical bear. Walt just doubles down—as he always does—never entertaining the idea that Jesse could betray him. Saul walks away, out to his car, parked in a wildly impractical spot in the parking garage. He can’t see Pinkman right now, can’t deal with much at all right now. 

Fucking Jesse Pinkman. Fucking Hank Schrader. Fucking Walt White. Why? As nervous as he is right now about everything that Jesse’s threatening, he just wants to take him home and put a cold (warm?) compress on his face. Bring him takeout from the 24-hour Chinese place he likes so much. Get a bunch of Redbox disks to watch in bed. Saul recognizes that the warm bloom of affection being unaffected by his present circumstances is dangerous, but he can’t fight it. He runs his hands through his hair, feeling remnants of gel from before he anxiously sat at Jesse’s bedside, waiting for him to properly come to. Why can’t he just be normal? Whatever happened to elder law and a corporate apartment? Well, he guesses nothing was ever quite honest in that either. He was destined to be this way. How tragic. 

He vows that when Pinkman gets discharged, he’ll at the very least bring him a burrito and offer his company. 

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAA i haven't written fanfiction for literally ... 2?? 3??? years but i got my best friend to watch breaking bad and she mentioned the scene at the beginning of S3E7 where jesse's in the hospital and i Wanted To Write It. soz if it's not too great lmao.


End file.
